Towboarding (similar to skimboarding) is a widely-practiced athletic endeavor. A towboarder (i.e., the human operator) of the board is pulled on a board by another human wearing a harness. The board can be specially designed for towboarding, or it can be another type of board such as a skimboard, wakeboard, wake skateboard, skates, snowboard, skateboard, landboard, iceboard, buggy, wake ski, etc. The person towing the towboarder wears a harness for transmitting the pull force of a towboarder's weight to the body of the wearer. The harness is connected to a tow rope, at the end of the tow rope, the rope is connected to a handle (also known as a wakeboard handle) through appropriate rigging, such as a tow mount connector for a towboarder to hold onto. The wearer of the harness can pull a towboarder over many different surfaces, including water, ice, snow and even flooded terra firma. The harness usually includes a towing connector at the rear (i.e., a girdle or vest). The heavy-duty towing connector is attached to the back of the harness on the lower half of it at waist level. The towing connector extends outward from the harness at the pelvis for catching a looped rope (also known as wakeboarding rope) through appropriate rigging.
While generally effective for transmitting the pull force of the towboarder's weight throughout the body of the wearer of the tow harness, the harness tends to exert an intermittent twisting or torsional force upon the body of the harness wearer whenever the towboarder desires to ride at an angle relative to the direction of the pull force of the towboarder and also tends to exert a “jerking” torsion force upon the body of the wearer whenever the towboarder makes a significant lateral shift relative to the wearer. Such torsional forces tend to prematurely fatigue to the wearer of the tow harness.
Variations of towboarding exist but they use other methods of towing a towboarder, such as, a snowmobile, all-terrain vehicle (ATV), bicycle, motorcycle, gas powered winch, etc. However, all suffer a short coming in that none of the methods listed use a person to tow another person on a board. Moreover, human-mounted harnesses existing in the art are susceptible to the deleterious forces, resulting in physical harm to the operator and an inferior experience for the towboarder. The purpose of the present invention is to use a person with a specialized tow harness to tow a towboarder without the use of a mechanical device.
This background information is provided to reveal information believed by the applicant to be of possible relevance to the present invention. No admission is necessarily intended, nor should be construed, that any of the preceding information constitutes prior art against the present invention.